CO Word of the Week #13

[MayorWanze]

Hi, I think that waiting for a patch until end of march doesn't make sense. The current state of the game is basically that of an early access game. By releasing patches regularly at least they could get immidiate feedback.

With regular patches they would also get immidiate feedback from people with different hardware.

well, they already adressed how and why they will be adjusting the hotfix/patch release schedule over the last month. What would it change, if they mentioned, once again, that they are currently operating on that schedule just because some CC said they dislike the schedule?

The game is planned to be in live development for 10 years and people are still arguing if the launch state was good enough for a standalone title.

 

[specializedguy]

Paradox is the publisher, the game was developed by Colossal Order

My apologies! Thank you for the correction.

 

[DanielR80]

Unfortunately a roadmap is not something we'll be sharing at this time.

That would have been a good information to put in a Wotw. You previously said you're working on it: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/co-word-of-the-week-9.1622032/post-29376520

 

[Hubbubb17]

But there is also a group of players, who point out that the mechanics in the game are either broken or making game to easy, like deep-fake simulation, i.e. it does not matter what you do in the game, but on a first glance it seems there is simulation of live in the game. The reason why they are angry is, that CS2 was sold to them as greatest city simulator.

I disagree with the basic premises of this group. The simulation models economic decision-making... and it is absolutely more sophisticated than some of the decision-making that occurred in CS1. For example, in CS1 if you raised your taxes above 12% cims left, period. In CS2, you can set your taxes as high as 30% ... and that doesn't seem to have much of an adverse affect with commercial and industry. But what happens with residential is what you might expect to see IRL. Land values drop because of course no one is going to buy a home in an area with 30% tax rates. So you end up unable to attract or build a higher skilled labor force and you're stuck with garden variety basic industry. So you learn to keep your tax rates relatively low while slowly ramping up services as you can afford them. I think this IS the deeper simulation that people have been demanding... for some reason they seem to have lost sight of the fact that this IS an element of the game.

On the flip side, I would also agree that there doesn't seem to be much of a price paid for relatively high levels of unemployment. But on the other hand, if you've maintained a suitable environment, placed parks and amenities like wireless internet etc. cims will tolerate unemployment better. Is this "realistic" I'm not sure. But it does model the principle of trade-offs and opportunity costs in real life economic thinking.

There are things happening in the game that are rationally predictable. Land value appreciation is a good example. The behavior of land value in this game is entirely predictable in a rational model. Of course as an urban area increases density thus establishing higher standards of living, low density residential demand should crash (higher standards of living are economically not feasible in lower density residential areas). In the United States, at least, many of us are now cognizant that our reliance on single-person conveyances and suburban sprawl has been disastrous for our society, economy, and the environment. Yet ... we persist. I read an article somewhere showing that while 85% of U.S. citizens now live in dense urban centers on the coasts, sprawl in this country has continued apace simultaneously. What is happening in the game in relation to land value is entirely rational behavior. The developers need to place some kind of limit on this phenomenon because the rational behavior doesn't always reflect real life behavior. You could call this a bug if you want ... but you could also say it's entirely predicable behavior in a rational economic decision-making model.

So I'd argue this behavior in the simulation is NOT a bug. The game is behaving exactly as it was designed to... that behavior needs to be adapted to our human, non-rational instincts (humans don't ALWAYS make rational choices in terms of where we live, etc.). But describing this as a "bug" is a flawed analysis. IMO

I also don't disagree that there are some elements in how the simulation is designed that could allow for a hard mode. In CS1, for example, TMPE allowed us to turn off despawning. A MOD allowed us to do that, however. It wasn't a feature in the base game. Complaining about this is nonsensical.

The real issue, here, again IMO, is the desire for a free-for-all, wild west modding community on Steam. Personally, I found much of that nonsense distasteful. Malicious coders ... families of modders down-voting other modders to limit real competition, etc. And should players really need an advanced degree to figure out how some of these mods work? Harmony took us a long way forward, but I couldn't count the number of hours I spent trying to get my mod combination just right so that I had a stable game. I also think PDXCO did a great job with the last few DLCs allowing modders early access to content to update some of the more popular mods in the game. Wait 24 hours after release and most of the mods had been updated.

I'm happy to wait for a moderated, streamlined, integrated modding experience. The Wild West on Steam was a !#@$ show.

And then you also have a group of gamers, which cannot play the game at all, because their game is constantly crashing.

You are focusing on first group, can you try to focus on remaining two and also tell me they are wrong.

Totally hear this and 150% sympathize. This was my situation in 1999 when EA released SimCity 3000. My computer at the time simply couldn't handle that new version of the game, and I definitely didn't have the cash to go out and buy a new gaming PC. I planned ahead for this CS2 release. In 2016 I bought a cheap Best Buy gaming system with an i7 and have been steadily upgrading that system one new component every year or so suspecting this might happen with CS2. I apologize if I'm being insensitive. I haven't purposely ignored this... there just isn't much I can say or do about this.

Being reflective, I'm not convinced one can be entirely justified here either. On the one hand, I agree it's not unreasonable to expect developers to be mindful of the range of systems on which their game is played--and to think about the needs of their audience. On the other hand, this is the nature of innovation, isn't it? Hardware advances drive software development forward--and software development provides new expectations for hardware needs. Am I being reductive?

 

[Collector78]

Hi
THIS! This is what the community is looking for. I think this is/was the very first interaction between Colossal Order and some not so simple questions/concerns. I appreciate and I think I can say this in the name of many: Please do this in the word of the week. In general, there are so many questions unanswered but popping up every time which could be answered with a simple FAQ. Even if it means "we don't know yet". But at least, it shows the community that you're reading, listing, watching.

However, at least me, I'm disappointed to read that you won't apologize for the launch of the game. It shows that you won't take responsibility. Yes, you have not met our expectations. But this expectation was created and established by you through the year of 2023, with all your little sneak-peak videos. It just surprises me, after all you can still do a No man sky U-turn. You know yourself the game in its current state should have never been launched. There are only two options, either you really weren't aware of the following three points or you decided to publish anyway knowing that the game is not ready:

• Performance issues (which you mentioned right before launch date)
• Severe game-breaking bugs
• Lack of mod support (as promised)

Someone in the community made the comparison last time that if you buy a blender you'd expect one that works. If you come home and realize that the most important part doesn't work, you'd naturally go back to the seller and either ask for a refund or an explanation. The first one is no longer possible because it was not obvious right away that the game has so many severe issues that it took some time to see what state the game is truly in but because of that we can't refund it anymore (plus the lack of content which was promised etc.). The second one we're trying to do but are not getting anything back. Now we're sitting here, with a half-working blender and the manufacture tells us "Don't worry I'll send you in about 6 months maybe the working parts". And "sorry we didn't meet your expectation". In all honesty, does this behavior make any sense to you? It doesn't to me, and to the whole City Skyline Community (and hey, don't worry, you're not the first publisher / dev studio going through this process, I don't need to mention names but it should be obvious by now that this game launching strategy (and especially how you're cleaning up the mess currently) does nothing but hurt the brand).

The game has some cool new mechanics and over all, yes one can play it. But it feels unfinished. You could have prevented a lot of discussions with pushing the release for another half of a year. Cities Skyline I was doing so well anyway, with its peaking amount of players at the same time. But ever since your launch you lost almost all players for Citites Skyline II and reduced the amount of player for CS I. It was just a bad move, shooting the stocks down from paradox interactive. So No, I can ensure you, if Colossal Order won't take full responsibility and apologize for this mess, there will be a scar left. And obviously new players in 5 years won't know anything about this, but your core community will remember.

That being said, I wish you a lot of strength and wisdom for the next few months. Thanks for your work and that you try to communicate to the community even if it doesn't always meet their "language".

Best,
A player from your community

May I compliment you on one of the best reactions on this forum ever. I really hope @co_martsu reads it and comes back to you with a well-deserved reaction

 

[anydaytv]

I fear we've been a situation where we are damned if we do and damned if we don't when it comes to the communication with the community. We will not subject our personnel to any form of abuse and in the current climate it's very difficult for us to have interaction that is not overwhelmingly stressful. Therefore I asked for civility and we all saw how that went. We are doing our best and we'll just have to wait and get the results in the game to get passed this. It will take the time it takes as unfortunately there's no way to speed things up more than we already have.

Sure. I know you don't have a magic wand, so I'll give it a "wait and see"

As far as performance goes, I know I've already recommended this in a previous WoW - but you really need to look into the resource pathfinding. I think people would prefer seeing more residents driving around than cargo trucks, and one of the major drains on CPU performance right now seems to be the balancing of resource buying from company buildings. I went into more detail on your post about cargo.

Also, I'm really not sure why residents inside underground subway terminals are rendered, even if you can't see them -- when it's clear that the design for the asset has a "rabbit hole" specifically for occlusion like this.

Also, why are zoning cells always being recalculated? Shouldn't they only be recalculated when a road node is changed or the terrain is edited?

I know I'm sounding nitpicky. But - It's small things like this that add up over time and impact performance in huge ways down the line. I think these are the sorts of things people want to hear being discussed.

 

[Licenturion]

For the TLDR people:
Hey community. We don’t actually care about answering your actual questions or follow up on them. We care so much about ‘interacting’ with you in one sided communication. We love you, and we actually don’t read your replies.

To be fair. You managed to get me from a kind constructive guy reporting bugs and savegames and spreading positive hopeful vibes that things get better to actual full resentment mode in spreading information people not to purchase DLC or the console version when it appears. You won’t get my money anymore because it is clear CO doesn’t care and only want to bring out ‘our great community’ when it is beneficial for them, because otherwise we are seen as a nuisance and ignored.

 

[cesorusoverparadoxusus]

For the TLDR people:
Hey community. We don’t actually care about answering your actual questions or follow up on them. We care so much about ‘interacting’ with you in one sided communication. We love you, and we actually don’t read your replies.

To be fair. You managed to get me from a kind constructive guy reporting bugs and savegames and spreading positive hopeful vibes that things get better to actual full resentment mode in spreading information people not to purchase DLC or the console version when it appears. You won’t get my money anymore because it is clear CO doesn’t care.

chatgpt has more compassion to create descriptions and replies than they do

 

[unmerged(524934)]

For the TLDR people:
Hey community. We don’t actually care about answering your actual questions or follow up on them. We care so much about ‘interacting’ with you in one sided communication. We love you, and we actually don’t read your replies.

To be fair. You managed to get me from a kind constructive guy reporting bugs and savegames and spreading positive hopeful vibes that things get better to actual full resentment mode in spreading information people not to purchase DLC or the console version when it appears. You won’t get my money anymore because it is clear CO doesn’t care.

I agree with you, and I'm not buying any DLC or whatever beyond what I've already paid for AND STILL HAVEN'T RECEIVED 3 months later... but you can see the bind CO are in - they've gone from being the darlings of the city builder scene, with a huge and loyal fanbase, to becoming the poster children for how to completely alienate your fans and send ten years of goodwill swirling down the drain in the space of three short months.

Honestly, the way they've gone about this would be impressive if it wasn't so utterly reprehensible.

 

[Atthillius]

well, they already adressed how and why they will be adjusting the hotfix/patch release schedule over the last month. What would it change, if they mentioned, once again, that they are currently operating on that schedule just because some CC said they dislike the schedule?

The game is planned to be in live development for 10 years and people are still arguing if the launch state was good enough for a standalone title.

Hi, they don't have to do that of course, I just wanted to voice my opinion on the decision to wait until the end of March. From my point of view there are some bugs which just have to be removed before they even release the first dlc or the mod editor.

The launch state was definitely not good enough from a software development perspective.

My problem is more that the standalone game should be a game which you can enjoy without the game crashing or slowing down to the point were it is not pleasant. I have also encountered bugs which are game braking like the land value issue or for example yesterday I had a city where after changing the office tax rate from 10% to 9% it went from being 25 million in the positive to being something like 67 million in the negative.

It doesn't matter that the game will be in live development or not for the next 10 years, but as someone who is working 42 hours a week and paid 55 euros for a game which got released with game breaking bugs it is just not enough. My time to play is limited and I don't even have a family yet.

If the game would've been released at the price of 35 euros with an early access banner I wouldn't even be here writing this comment. Nevertheless I am proud of what the developers have achieved, but the state in which the game is so many months after the release is not good enough.

 

[Licenturion]

I agree with you, and I'm not buying any DLC or whatever beyond what I've already paid for AND STILL HAVEN'T RECEIVED 3 months later... but you can see the bind CO are in - they've gone from being the darlings of the city builder scene, with a huge and loyal fanbase, to becoming the poster children for how to completely alienate your fans and send ten years of goodwill swirling down the drain in the space of three short months.

Honestly, the way they've gone about this would be impressive if it wasn't so utterly reprehensible.

Well to quote Madame CEO ‘actions are louder than words’.

They don’t address anything head on and reply to anything here. So that action says they don’t care. So I don’t either.

 

[aortali2147]

Once you reach a certain threshold, government subsidies will disappear.

Watch the economy panel- the subsidies will reappear any time you start losing too much. Although, tbh, they don't matter at all because I've had games where the panel shows me losing enormous amounts of money (even with the subsidy) but the balance available continues to rise. As far as I can see, the economy panel is just useless. It's just easier to play however you think you want and ignore taxes, revenues, production, and every other detail because the game will happily roll along. Yes, you will get a lot of whinging and little symbols all over the place, but they simply don't have any consequences. Well, buildings will be abandoned or collapse, but they will rebuild if there is any demand so in the end it doesn't matter.

 

[aortali2147]

Busses are getting bunched up at the bus station because they have to wait for a gap in the steady stream of pedestrians walking to the bus station and crossing over the bus entrance. Since both the busses and pedestrians enter the station from the front, there is no way to design around this at all, resulting in a bus line grinding to a halt if I use a bus station. The workaround is to use bus stops and no stations whatsoever, making the station a fairly useless asset.

Most of the buildings that include vehicles have truly terrible paths. Look at the train stations: if you add the taxi stand, the taxis can not pass each other and have to come back out the way they enter blocking traffic to a very large extent.

The cargo train: trucks normally only enter the one driveway and have to make a hard right turn immediately (or a u-turn if they approach along the frontage); if you force them to enter a different driveway they pass the exit point from the warehouse which blocks trucks exiting and slows down an already flawed process.

Bus stations and adding bus stops to the passenger ship harbor are seriously flawed.

If it becomes possible to alter the invisible roads and paths through a mod (or edit these in the future asset editor and save them for future use) that could be fixed by us. BUT they should never have been designed with such ridiculously bad pathing in the first place. These are visible signs to me that CO seems to be concentrating on things that are not exposed in the game and we never see. The supposedly vast and difficult simulation may well affect the actual game behavior, but we have no way to see it or directly affect it and then see changes.

 

[gameblogger]

The design team is looking into this and we'll communicate about it when we have something concrete to share.


The release has been discussed on multiple occasions and we have expressed that we are sorry for not meeting the expectations. We are not sorry to have released the game and we are proud to have overcome multiple issues during development, that was the most challenging we've ever faced. With that said, there is still a mountain to climb and we're working on the game; bugfixes and improvements, modding support, the promised DLC for the Ultimate Edition and the missing platforms. We believe the best way forward is to keep working on the game and learn from the mistakes. There are people playing Cities: Skylines II and we're committed to them and to this game.


We have agreed not to release any information that is not concrete and could cause further disappointment. When it comes to the streamers (and community) we have received the feedback and it's taken into account. Before there are any concrete results we're not able to share it. Progress is being made and it will be communicated. We have not abandoned the game. Thanks for the feedback on the open positions, didn't think of that!


9 women can't make a baby in one month is probably a good way to describe the situation we've faced. Unfortunately throwing money at a problem doesn't always solve issues. With that said we are indeed looking to strengthen the team and we wish to find suitable people to work with us so we can speed up the development in the long run.

Consoles are something we've committed to at announcement, but as those are not available to purchase there's no revenue from them. All the optimizations required for it will benefit the PC. We believe we can find places to still optimize the game further without dumbing down the simulation. Though it also requires work for different reasons.


I fully understand and respect this and it's not urgent. It took 10 years to get CS1 to the point it is today. We'll be happy to welcome you to Cities: Skylines II in the years to come, when you feel the game (or the modding) is ready.

I have to ask - was there any pressure from Paradox to release the game when you did, in the state that you did; or did you have full control over the release date?

 

[Nicthurne]

You anser "questions" that most seasoned CS-players (the majority on this forum are seasoned, not new players) already know the answer to. You completely ignore the real questions, frustrations and sentiment that lives in your community.

I hope you guys don't actually believe that this is being written for this forum. The Word of the Week is being published on Steam, and IMO that's clearly what their target audience is. Because it makes zero sense to post any of this if they wanted to interact with the forum - and all evidence points to them not wanting to interact with the forum.

 

[steeven_747]

my game stutters when i have around 100k population. is there anyway to fix it ( i might of posted this twice srry)

 

[FX2K]

Feel free to send more questions our way and we’ll be answering them in future Words of the Week!

Sincerely,
Mariina

Have you seen this section of the forum?

Cities: Skylines 2 - Bug Reports

forum.paradoxplaza.com

Is the recent spate of crashes since the last patch even being looked at yet, or is that in 6 months time with dlc?

Many thanks, a paying customer.

 

[Hubbubb17]

there was a perfectly viable option the last game functioned just fine on

But it didn't really.

​

 

[avguy2]

Well to quote Madame CEO ‘actions are louder than words’.

They don’t address anything head on and reply to anything here. So that action says they don’t care. So I don’t either.

There's nothing they can say that would do any good. (A sincere apology, maybe, but would you believe Mariina?) Continuing the WoWs is the weirdest move. They had it right the first time: If you don't have anything substantial to say it's better not to say anything at all. I mean just look at the reactions.

Do I like the situation we're in? No. Do I think CO can do anything about it now? Also no.

Releasing the game unfinished and everything was a super bad decision (who would have thought!) but it's done. Only way to gain back trust is fix it and that clearly won't happen over night.

 

[Hubbubb17]

I feel like a wallet at this point. As such I have uninstalled the game and have no intentions on touching CS2 again until the patches start up, the game is reasonably playable, and we get something that does not feel like an early access release.

the game is "reasonably playable" now